Tag: sorrow

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current events uncategorized

The Highest Cost of War

If i were living in a video game, i would probably do video game things: senseless slaughter, reckless driving, and generally causing mayhem. It’s sure as hell fun in a video game.

I’d probably have a real itchy trigger finger; blowing character’s heads clean off would cause me to ceaselessly cackle as i wheel about looking for more victims, and more nastiness to get into.

Soldiers, however, do not live in video games. They kill real people. Actual human beings, with lives and families and friends and day jobs – be they evildoers or just innocent civilians, caught in the line of fire. Sometimes, though, things go wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

Frankly, it’s getting a little tedious, hearing and reading about all the civilian deaths in Iraq. It has been going on for a long time, after all.

That’s why i put off reading this The Nation piece (alt.link.print) for about a week before i got around to reading it.

The Iraq War is a vast and complicated enterprise… Fighting in densely populated urban areas has led to the indiscriminate use of force and the deaths at the hands of occupation troops of thousands of innocents.

I can not and will not blame soldiers en masse or individually. It’s a real bad situation over there, and we need to get those guys out of there as quickly as we possibly can, before more soldiers crack under pressure and bring the whole damn thing down.

It’s ok to be against the war and NOT spit on returning soldiers. That kind of folly is for idiot hippies with misguided frustration. These guys need a lot of help, from many different angles. War does terrible things to a man’s soul. But we must have hope that these inner demons can be defeated, every last one of them, for every last soldier who was there and saw bad things happen.

The bottom line: we’ve gotta get out of that place.

In the four long years of the war, the mounting civilian casualties have already taken a heavy toll–both on the Iraqi people and on the US servicemembers who have witnessed, or caused, their suffering. Iraqi physicians… published a study late last year… that estimated that 601,000 civilians have died since the March 2003 invasion… [They] found that coalition forces were responsible for 31 percent of these violent deaths, an estimate they said could be “conservative,” since “deaths were not classified as being due to coalition forces if households had any uncertainty about the responsible party.”

“Just the carnage, all the blown-up civilians, blown-up bodies that I saw,” Specialist [Jeff] Englehart said. “I just–I started thinking, like, Why? What was this for?”

“It just gets frustrating,” Specialist [Garett] Reppenhagen said. “Instead of blaming your own command for putting you there in that situation, you start blaming the Iraqi people…. So it’s a constant psychological battle to try to, you know, keep–to stay humane.”

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family life uncategorized

black hole

it’s starting to really hit me. the initial shock and numbness is done with. today is somehow different. it was already really bad for me (it’s been a deepening pit of hell for 2 1/2 years now, with the absolute worst part of it starting just two weeks ago). but now it seems even harsher somehow. i feel like i’m trying desperately to escape the immense gravity of a black hole.

it’s sinking in.

hell, i’m sinking in.

someone i knew and loved, lived with and shared experiences and conversations with for years and years… dead. gone. forever.

no more talking. no more sharing. no more gestures or hugs or ironic smiles. ever.

i should point out that, as a devout agnostic who leans rather heavily towards atheism, i do not believe in an afterdeath of any kind. extraordinary claims, after all, require extraordinary evidence. so this is… difficult. to say the least.

life. gone. over. finished. done. kaput. a fire is snuffed forever.

this may be even worse than when my poor sweet grandmother died in 2001, if only because now, the other shoe has finally dropped. it’s like the floor itself has been pulled out from under me, and all that exists is empty space underneath for me to fall through. the bottom, as it were, has dropped out!

i am starting to freak out

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family life uncategorized

terrible happiness

My grandfather’s back home now. We’re all, basically, on Death Watch. He’s home; home to die. I hope he knows he’s home, anyway.

He is now beyond being able to communicate. I remember this part all too well from when my dear sweet Grandma was at death’s door. It’s the most frustrating thing. You sense that they want something but have no way to determine what and give it to them.

Not only that, but it seems like my grandfather is thinking on an infant level. Maybe not; in a way, though, that would be preferable. I hate the thought of him knowing full well the extent of the damage to his verbal and motor skills. But the oxygen deprivation from last Thursday’s terrible ordeal virtually guarantees that he’s brain damaged.

It’s horrifying, and heart-shattering, and there’s not a god damned thing that anybody can do.

The poor guy has been through so much. To think that he’s laying there with his ribs all broken, just fading out, piece by piece… I’m completely heartbroken.

Sometimes, when he’s awake, he’ll just stare and stare at you. No words. No words. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I don’t know if he knows who I am. My bud, my lifelong best friend, my teacher and mentor… is he in there somewhere?

So I’m trying to get on FMLA so I don’t lose my job. After giving them 50 hours of every week of my time, I have earned a whopping $0.30 raise, which I do need, since Dayton-area employers seem to think it’s completely fair to pay a person with over 10 years of call center experience $9 an hour. Unfortunately, I have to prove that he was my legal guardian.

Much easier said than done.

So I’ve been digging through countless drawers and boxes of memories. Ever have a moment of terrible happiness? That’s seeing a picture of my grandparents, young and sweet and smiling, knowing that one is gone forever, and the other is leaving soon.

My grandparents raised me, so this has been exactly like losing parents to me.

But I cannot prove it.

I think that I am going to lose my job very soon.

What could be worse than that?

I know that I am going to lose my grandpa very soon.

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family life uncategorized

Grandpa’s pain

Today was another mostly shitty day.

My grandfather was due to be taken to Hospice at around 1pm. Getting up around noon, I didn’t want to show up at the hospital just to turn around, pay $2 parking (let’s remember that I really have no income right now), and leave again. So I waited around at home for the call to action.

Finally, at 6:30pm, he was moved. I could have been at the hospital the whole time with my family. So that was irritating, and now I feel guilty for something I didn’t even cause.

At hospice, he was settled in and Holly and my uncle Kent and I went out to get Subway. We came back and finished our food. I went out to smoke and came back to find Holly sitting in the dining area alone. We went to my grandfather’s room and this is what we found:

The door was shut. After knocking lightly, I opened the door and beheld four Hospice staff and my dear uncle standing around in some vague state of chaos. Here’s what was going down:

They needed to change the dressing on his wounds (he’s got pressure sores – essentially bedsores, having been in bed for pretty much the last 2 1/2 years), and had just given him morphine so they could roll him over to change them without excessive pain. Remember that he’s got multiple cracked ribs from chest compressions, when the doctors in the ICU brought him back to life a few days ago.

So the bones in his chest are probably killing him when they do this. They’ve got to be. I heard him loudly moaning. “Oahh! Ooh! Aaahh! Oooah! Ohh!”

So what’s the problem, exactly?

My father and, mostly, my uncle want him to not have morphine. My uncle made no friends in that room tonight. He was aggressive. I do not blame him for that, since many health care workers have failed us terribly in the past. Still…

I’m not at all certain what alternative they want, exactly, because my uncle tonight did not want to elaborate with me on the other side of that coin. He only wanted to emphatically and adamantly defend his position that Grandpa NOT be given morphine.

At the end, after trying to voice my understanding of things, he simply walked off. I told him: “I’m not trying to fight with you or anything, I only want to understand all of this.” This he would not hear.

He said that Grandpa made more noise when they were moistening his nose. I remember: “Dad, dad!” It was not as loud. It was not a horrifying sound. Not like when he was being turned over. “Ohh! Aaaah! Ooooh! Aaa-ooh! Ohh!”

He would not hear anything that I had said. It was Know-It-All vs. Know-Nothing. Many times, my voice goes unheard, or, worse, talked over. I am not to be taken seriously in any opinion that I give. This fact has been presented to me in practice many, many times in the past, and in the present. I’m just this perpetual sixteen-year old kid.

I used to wonder why I felt so inconsequential, so ineffectual. I have been treated like this all my life. One thing leads to another, and soon enough everybody else does it, too.

(I am a densely angry thirty-five year old man. I understand more about people, and about the way the universe works, than anybody else I know, including the blow-hards who only claim to know. I understand the great “mysteries” of life. (There is no mystery, only cause and effect. There are only events, in varying orders, at various frequencies. People behave according to their chemicals, steered by their recorded experiences.) I can do any task presented before me, and have proven this many times over. I am tougher than many. The things that I have seen and experienced, other people only emptily brag about. I am far more powerful than I let on – I am only weak because I am not usually brave enough to try.)

So I left, too. I walked right out of that place, and I drove home. I wanted to smash something. Had Holly not been in the car with me, I would have driven fast and crazy and mad. When I got home, I changed into shorts and a tank top and ran as hard as I could. I found an abandoned shopping cart and threw it to the ground: “chank!” I punched a street sign: “smak!” I wanted to beat the holy living hell out of something – to break something, anything into tiny little pieces. I broke nothing, and maybe that means something, or not.

The more I think about it – and why not think about it? What I think doesn’t matter! – the more I think this: “So what if he’s stoned out of his poor, already-crippled mind for a couple of hours, every other day or so?”

Think about having your ribs broken. Then think about having someone forcibly roll you onto your side. Think about the raw, cracked bone rubbing up against bone, under your meat. Surely bone, muscle, and sinew must all scream with pain!

One good thing: possibly the only coherent sentence my grandfather spoke today was when he looked at me and said, “I love you.” That was maybe the sweetest moment of my entire life.

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family life uncategorized

Tides

Ralph Jarratt and his pal Matty

Two and a half years ago, my grandfather suddenly took ill. I will never forget the late-night phone call. This was a couple years after his triple bypass. Up to that day, he was a completely normal person, as healthy as you’d imagine an 84 year old ox of a man to be. He’d forget words now and then, but was otherwise just like you or me.

He’d had leukemia for over thirty years, mind you.

After he took ill, he was never the same. Greene Memorial Hospital did everything wrong. Every little thing. They tried to put him in their nursing home (his doctor Taylor has a stake in that facility, FYI) over and over, where he only continued to do worse. They did not allow him the chance to get any better. And he didn’t!

In that system, he has lost his ability to walk and to swallow. Almost 100% of the life on this planet survives largely because of those two underrated skills. But what do I know?

His general health has declined steadily ever since. He became confused. So much that I am not 100% positive that he knows exactly who I am anymore or how we are related. He doesn’t seem to know his general layout in the universe anymore.

Which brings us to now.

Last Sunday night, he was having some trouble with breathing and a very rapid heart beat. We called a squad to take him to the hospital (not Greene Memorial). He had some pneumonia. He stayed in ICU for a few days.

Thursday: I was sitting with him, trying to make some kind of conversation (he’s a man of extraordinarily few words these days, alas), when he said “help me.” I got a nurse and she said that he was “guppy breathing” (exactly, more or less, what you would imagine a guppy breathing like) and he had some crap in his throat they found difficult to suction out.

His blood oxygen level was dipping below normal. When it fell below 85%, a doctor advised that they would have to put him on a ventilator, which itself could be fatal, due to his weakened condition and his low platelet count.

They ushered me out of the room to put the tube down his throat. There was an undeniable sense of emergency to the situation. I called my dad and paced around in the hallway outside of the ICU. About a half hour later, the doctor came out and informed me that they got the tube in him, but that his heart had stopped.

He had died. Died.

CPR was performed, which, par for the course, broke some of his ribs from the compression. He came back and was breathing with the ventilator.

When we went in afterward, his blood oxygen was well below 90%. He was not looking too good. In fact, he looked real bad. His left shoulder, I noticed, was gray. He made no movements or sound.

We all gathered around, my dad and his wife and I, plus nurses and doctors and a clergy woman. We had a terrible time. I cried and grieved and told him how much I loved him and how good he had been, etc. His blood oxygen bottomed out at around 45%. There would most likely be brain damage if he managed to survive at all, which was not likely at all.

He slowly became more responsive, and was eventually looking up and down with his eyes, and moving his arms. He’d take his arms and push them out above him, as if punching the air in slow motion.

I think now that he was saying: “God damn it! Stop talking to me like I was dying! I’m not dying, you bunch of assholes!” I think he was scared and more than a little pissed off.

He recovered from death. Unfortunately, little, if anything, can be done at this point, should his poor sweet old heart give up again.

This Sunday, a few days later, they took him to a room near the ICU, but out of it. His blood oxygen has been ~100% ever since a couple hours after he died. Later today (Monday), we will be taking him to Hospice for a week. After that, assuming he is still with us, he will go back to his home, where he has lived, off and on, for 35 years. He does not know whose house it is, but he will be home, with his poor broken ribs (which he has yet to complain about), where he can die, hopefully peacefully, and in relative comfort among his family.

I am 100% not ready for this. I love this man so much that it’s just killing me. He and my grandmother raised me. The flood of memories that assault me constantly is overwhelming. I drown in them hourly, revive, and drown again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

My poor father, who has been taking care of him for the last two years, is beaten and it’s showing. I worry for him. He has beaten a lot of odds himself, and is a fine, good man. In sheer kindness, my father is second only to his dad – who is lying in a bed, unsure of his world, and dying.

The floor is dropping out of this family. There are no more kings or queens in our domain; only two princes and a minor count. We are haphazard and spent, our empire having fallen to dust.

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family life uncategorized

the long goodbye…

spent something like the last 20 hours in the ICU. grandfather: “help me” – phlegm, breathing rattley; some suction helped little. not oxygenating enough (level should be ~100; under 90 not good, under 85 bad – he was dropping to low 80s). concern raised: due to leukemia problems=platelet count low, trache tube could be fatal if laceration occurs. had to wait outside for several extraordinarily tense minutes. dad on his way. Doctor comes out, says they got the tube in his throat, but his heart stopped. he died. they revived him with CPR, breaking ribs (par). oxygen level bottomed out at 45.

my god how i cried and how i loved.

that fighter, that ox, that superhumanly strong man – his vitals are god damn near normal and have been for several hours. that is exactly like him, too. i hold no great hope, though.

need sleep now will return to hospital later.

you=regret nothing starting now!

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current events life media memories uncategorized

God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
November 11, 1922–April 11, 2007

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family life uncategorized

My Grandfather’s long boat, sinking downly

My grandfather is exhibiting end of lifecycle signs. My dad told me last night that he’s been having some rapid breathing episodes, among other things, which some nurses have agreed are signs.

Signs never have good news. It’s always warnings, bad portents of some sort. “Don’t come here,” “Ingredients: poison,” “Keep away,” “Bad juju involved,” “No more running over retarded children allowed,” “The end is nigh!” and the like. You never see a sign that says “Today is not so bad when you think about it, is it?” or “Welcome invaders!”

Last night we had him ambulanced to Grandview for uncontrollable bleeding around his feeding tube and congestion, which the hospital now tells me is pneumonia. My work is probably not going to let me take any additional time off, but we’ll just have to wait and see. My grandfather was my primary father figure in childhood and until he took off later on, raised me with my grandmother, who died about six years ago now (i was there when she left).

Between being overworked and working over to compensate for the expenses we have with an uninsured diabetic, Holly and i have not been able to be around my grandfather much. On my days off, i have been taken over by an unshakable funk which prevents me from leaving the apartment, much less going over there. Plus, there’s some guilt and shame for not having more time off to help my father and grandfather, and the general weird vibes re: his caretakers, who are all very nice; it’s just that i really wanted him to have licensed health care professionals, from an agency, people who could take shifts so nobody would have to sleep on the job – but we’ve had so many complications in that department. So there’s a lot of complicated feelings swirling around within me, not the least of which is a deep, deep feeling of regret for not having spent more time with him, especially back when he was more coherent.

One last thing: it’s been utterly, utterly heartbreaking watching his health decline. He is so incredibly skinny now. I mean you could wrap a single fist around his thighs, for fuck’s sake. I’ve always known him to be this big strong powerful (and cogent) ox of a man. Now he thinks it’s 1975 and he’s not sure what the President’s name is, and looks as frail and helpless as an infant.

These next few weeks are going to be pure, absolute hell no matter what.

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current events uncategorized

RIP RAW

Farewell, Robert Anton Wilson. You were there when we needed you, and left behind an arsenal of hilarious and unsettling tools with which to battle the enemies of free thought. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Hail Eris; all hail Discordia. Praise Dobbs. Ramen.

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current events memories uncategorized

Human Remains @ WTC site

More human remains have been found at the former site of the World Trade Center.

According to the Washington Post article above, ~20,000 pieces of people have thus far been found. ~2,749 died in the attack. This means that, statistically, every person who died at the World Trade Center that day was blown into an average of about 7 pieces.

Really brings it home, huh?

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internets media uncategorized

Video: evolution

Dove video, Evolution: “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.”

Cheers to that! Above link is a video of a beautiful but freckled model being made up beyond recognition, then photomanipulated to look like… well, to look like the image that we hold up as the standard for beauty for women. The bar is a little on the high side, don’t we think? I absolutely applaud this campaign. The industry in which I currently find myself laboring within could certainly use a little dose of reality. Ok, a whole hell of a lot.

Every day, I see the signs of a scarred self-image in the clients with whom I do business, and I am unnerved by it by much more than a little bit.

Women! Stop doing this to yourselves! You already ARE beautiful! It is necessary to eat healthy; it is unnecessary to starve and try to uphold yourself to a standard which is literally impossible to meet. Who do you fool but yourselves? Who will love you less, who deserves your love in return?

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current events

Flickr stream: photos from arabist

Lookit what hatred can do (photos from arabist of the Israel-Lebanon conflict)

Warning: some extremely graphic images of victims of Israeli war violence in Lebanon.

It’s too bad that the assholes in Hezbollah have to literally ruin the lives of Lebanese civilians by incurring the extreme wrath of Israel (who, let’s face it, pulled the trigger in the terrible images linked to above). I’ve always had a great fondness for the Lebanese. I had a childhood friend who (if i remember right) was Lebanese (he didn’t speak a word of English but we had fun, i hope), and who couldn’t love the country that gave us the late, great Khalil Gibran.

Extreme bad behavior never benefits anyone, whether coming from aggressors or defenders. Violence is violence. If this is how we solve our differences, then the human race truly is doomed to extinction, and godspeed.

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friends

This weekend. (R.I.P. Mark Hild)

The funeral for our old buddy Mark Hild was today. The viewing was yesterday. Attended both. Got no sleep. Saw Grandfather. He looks like he weighs all of 75lbs and is sweating like a pig in that inferno of a house. Extremely depressed over both situations.

Yesterday, Mark’s wonderful mother Alice remembered me (my god, the woman is superhuman after all!), and said that Mark had been on a breathing tube for a few years, and that he’d pretty much lost control of everything but his brain and mouth. She said that he was ready, that he was done with being sick. She looked remarkably at peace, and i am incredibly glad. What a sweet, yet strong, woman. Today i thanked her for being such a good mother for our friend.

Friday, i cried. Then, i was numb. Today, i’m crying again. Mark had a helluva Will. He Intended to keep on keepin’ on, until there was nothing left to keep. And he damn sure did just that. He did exactly that. Kid was a fighter, a tough MF.

Just a few short years ago, i honestly thought that he could beat that Muscular Dystrophy shit straight to hell. I really thought that he was Neo or something.

I noticed that the word “shame” was bandied about in regards to MD (unless i was hearing wrong, which may well be the case… i hope). I’ve never had it, so i have no right to any opinion on that, but i’ll give it anyway: Where is shame? Show me shame! All i see in people with MD is passion, sweetness, love, and some serious freakin’ people skills. I guess if i had it, i’d feel pretty self-conscious, and maybe even shame. But as a free-standing man who takes his health for granted, i can tell you that i have never once associated that foul word with Muscular Dystrophy, or any other disease. The very idea makes me think of those sick freaks who get all offended by the site of someone with a different physiology than their own. And to them [i say]? “Fuck you.” Seriously. “Fuck you.” Who cares what idiots like that think, who barely even deserve to walk freely at all?

I called out from work today again. I’ll go back tomorrow. Today is just a little… heavy for me.

These are just words, really. I’m just pouring them out of me with my tears. Sorry if i offend. I’m emotional. Go read Dale Huffman’s great story about Mark instead.